


family doesnt end with blood, but sometimes it ought to

by downthedarkpath



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Whump, anti is a bad egg, anti is a twat tho, anti's kind of idolising dark its really not good of him, definitely approach with caution, i dont really know how to tag this?, i guess approach with caution, kind of a superhero au but its twisted and weird, theyre a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 02:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downthedarkpath/pseuds/downthedarkpath
Summary: jackieboy isnt good enough for them, anti thinks. he should take matters into his own hands, he thinks, and he does





	family doesnt end with blood, but sometimes it ought to

**Author's Note:**

> word of warning/explanation i guess? a) marvin is kind of,, morally grey. anti is Not Nice and very manipulative. jackieboy isnt featured much but hes hurting and i feel really bad. b) this idea spawned from a prompt that went something like this 'person a is the only human in a team of superheroes, and person b thinks theyre a liability so they discard of them and lie to the rest of the team about it, until the team finds out and chaos thus ensues'
> 
> i kind of took that idea and ran with it a bit. if that prompt was a sprint track, i went cross country.

 

“Where’s Jackie?” Chase asks, poking his head round Anti’s door. He’s somewhat distracted, engrossed in a sheet of paper he’s holding.

Anti hums. “Probably in his room. Best leave him alone for now, he’s probably feeling quite fucked off about what happened with Wilford the other day.”

Chase chuckles, glancing up from the paper. “You’re probably right. Marvin’s plotting a route to somewhere or other if you’re in the mood for a mission.”

“Always,” Anti says, and Chase disappears back down the hallway. Anti listens to his footsteps pitter out and then he allows himself a grin. He feels some faint flicker of guilt (an emotion he, frankly, doesn’t care for), but he buries it. Jackie didn’t belong with them anyway. Perhaps he’ll become someone with his new owners.

* * *

 

JJ is being uncharacteristically enthusiastic, signing wildly at Henrik over a plate of blueberries. Anti doesn’t know where they got blueberries from, but he interrupts their conversation anyway to snatch a handful.

“The beast awakes!” Henrik declares, obviously teasing, if the smile in his voice is anything to go by.

“Yeah, yeah,” Anti says. JJ grins widely, twisting his fingers together.

“Is Jackie coming?” Marvin asks, “I want to brief everyone on a potential mission.” He snaps his fingers and a couple of purple-y blue sparks fall around his hands. Anti is well used to Marvin’s magic by now, both the vaguely unsettling colour and the acrid smell of overly sweet smoke it leaves behind, but seeing him use it so… casually is still unnerving.

It wasn’t long ago that Anti first saw Marvin use his power to its full ability, and he doesn’t think he’s looked at him the same since. For all intents and purposes, Marvin has remained exactly the same, but Anti feels more and more unsafe around him, because it’s just now dawning on him that he’s surrounded himself with some of the most powerful people he’s ever met.

The sparks melt into the table top, shimmering purple for a second before eating away at a spill of water that someone must have forgotten to clean up. Marvin is so calm and zen, and the contrast to his magic makes Anti nervous. He doesn’t think he’d like to fight Marvin, and he’s not actually sure if he’d win against him.

Chase shrugs. “No idea. He’s probably moping in his room.”

“Why would he be moping?” Henrik asks, his voice coloured with concern. “Is he okay?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Anti says, low and sly and slick in all the ways he knows how. “I’ll check on him later, get him up to speed.”

Marvin frowns at him, kind of suspiciously, but he lets it slide and says, “Okay, then. Well, here. I was sent a file the other day, detailing the dangers of some up and coming gang lord. We should check them out and eliminate them if we need to.”

JJ signs,  _ Who is it? _

“I don’t know,” Marvin says. “We need to do a re-con mission, and then send in the troops.”

“I’ll do re-con,” Anti volunteers. “I’ll take Jackie with me too.”

Marvin frowns in his direction again, but it barely lasts a second. Not nearly long enough for Anti to evaluate it as much as he’d like. “Okay. Take this file, it’s got everything I know about them so far. You should leave tonight, or early tomorrow morning.”

“Got it,” Anti says, taking the folder when Marvin offers it. He’ll probably only scan through it, but he’s never been a huge fan of information, and he’s never not been reckless and overly ambitious. Something about going into a mission half blind excites him.

Marvin’s glare is putting him on the edge of the seat, but Chase breaks the tension by dropping a blueberry in Henrik’s tea. Anti slips out of the kitchen, leaving the outraged screeching behind him.

* * *

 

He knows well enough that what he did to Jackie wasn’t right, or good, but he’s never pretended to be either. He presumes he’d be accused of superiority, or elitism, but the truth was that Jackie had never fitted in with them

They were all gods, walking among mortals. Sacrificing themselves to humanity for nothing in return. Jackie was too human for them. He wasn’t special, he wasn’t strong, he wasn’t good enough for them. Anti tells himself he gave Jackie to them for his own protection, because he’d never been able to keep with the rest of them. But he supposes he probably just signed Jackie’s death certificate, and he doesn’t particularly mind that thought.

Perhaps that was his intention in the first place.

It’s only been two days, which is working in his favour. No one suspects anything yet, but the more Anti comes up with excuses, the more suspicious they’ll get of him. He hadn’t actually planned this far ahead, more hung up on getting rid of Jackie than dealing with the repercussions but he supposes they had to come at some point.

He’s half tempted to find Jackie again, to see how he is and whether he can toy with his head any more. 

Anti comes to a decision when the sun bleeds red through his window. He’ll check out Marvin’s gang situation, and he’ll put all thought of Jackie to the back of his head.

Out of sight, out of mind, after all, and if Anti gets his way, he’s never seeing Jackie again.

* * *

 

Marv’s gang thing comes and goes sooner than Anti expected, and then the next one happens before he can blink, and then Chase has a concussion, Henrik is healing them all like bad, they’re fighting the fight like they’ve always done, Anti is pretending like he knows himself better than he does, and then Jackie’s been gone for four months and none of them have noticed.

It’s almost like he’s been erased from their ragtag group until the one evening Chase decides to look at the old photo albums. Anti doesn’t think much of it when he starts pulling them out of the cupboards and blowing off the dust, or when he starts flipping through the pages and oohing and aahing over whoever they used to be.

He does, however, get a bit worried when he hears Chase gasp and scream and drop the photo album with a thud louder than it should be.

“Chase?” Marvin yells, until they’ve all collected in the sitting room, staring at Chase.

Chase pants, staring at the photo album. Its landed open, on a page with four pictures on proper photo paper. He points to it. “We… We forgot about Jackie.”

Anti’s heart drops. He almost falls forward trying to get to the photos, and, shit. There they all are, all except Henrik, who took the photo. Jackieboy is sandwiched between Chase and Marvin, wearing his red hoodie and his blue mask like it’s halloween.

The next photo is Chase and Jackie.. Jackie’s wearing Chase’s hat, and they’re both grinning at the camera.

Anti remembers the night they took these. Chase was banging on about how he wanted more memories. JJ had called him sentimental and Anti had laughed. Marvin had made them take the photos anyway, and Chase had looked so at peace that Anti felt like he was seeing a different person.

The third and fourth photo are almost identical. The third is of him, Jackie, and Chase all piggy-backing on JJ. The fourth is slightly blurred, as they all fell off of JJ’s back. Anti feels a sharp spike of nostalgia hit him and it’s been a while since he felt anything close to familial with this group. 

They’re pawns, he told himself long ago, and he’s winning the game. He didn’t allow himself to get close, and he won’t allow it now. His barriers go back up, and he moulds his face into something mimicking concern.

Marvin spares him a five second glance. Anti feels some sense of foreboding making itself at home in his stomach, but he tells himself its useless fear. There’s no way Marvin could know what he did.

“Right,” Marvin says. “Okay. We… Who was the last person to see Jackie?”

“Anti,” Henrik says. He sounds afraid. Anti likes the tremor in his voice.

Marvin turns to him. “Do you know where Jackie is, Anti?” he asks, all soft and careful and gentle, like he’s taming a wild animal. 

Anti shakes his head mutely. He’s somewhat afraid that if he speaks he’ll start yelling, and then things’ll never end.

“Are you sure?” Chase asks, eyes wide and genuine. He’s so fragile, Anti thinks, fragile and breakable.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Anti says. It’s a lie, obviously. And Marvin knows it’s a lie. It’s been a while since he’s been the focus of Marvin’s anger, but it only serves as a reminder of why he doesn’t want to be the focus of it.

“Where is he, Anti?” Marvin asks. He’s still so gentle, and it frustrates Anti. Grating on his nerves, like nails on a chalkboard.

“He’s away,” Anti finds himself saying, even though his mouth didn’t move. Once he starts, it’s like the floodgates open. “It’s better this way. He was a liability. We can do our job now.”

_ We could do our job with him,  _ JJ signs. Anti isn’t sure how he manages to convey such betrayal through staccato hand movements.

“He was human. We’re not,” Anti snarls. “We’re better than that. Better than him. We didn’t need him dragging us down, don’t you understand? We’ve done so much more, so much better without him.”

“That’s not the point,” Chase says.  “Where is he?”

Anti glares at them. His eyes feel like they’re melting. “He’s with Dark,” he says eventually, relishing in the gasps it elicits.

“Dark would kill him!” Henrik exclaims. “I pray that was not your intention.”

Dark, their long time enemy and the owner of some kind of mob (Anti doesn’t particularly care enough to remember), is probably the most dangerous man he’s ever met. He’s horrifically powerful, and the things he does with that power have given Chase and JJ nightmares on more than one occasion. Anti is morbidly fascinated.

“Jesus,” Chase says.

“Were you trying to kill him?” Marvin asks.

Anti shrugs. “I was just trying to get rid of him. He was a deadweight.”

“He was a valuable member of our team,” Marvin says.

“You were the ones who forgot about him,” Anti says, with a shark-tooth grin. 

“We ought to swap him for you,” Chase snarls, launching himself across the room. Anti doesn’t know where Chase got the knife from, but it’s hardly a shock to feel it at his throat. “I ought to kill you right here for what you did.”

“Do it, then,” Anti says, leaning forward into the blade. “But you’ll never find him again if you do.”

“You’re evil,” Chase tells him. “You’re pure evil.”

Anti just laughs at him.

* * *

 

He was expecting them to exchange Jackie’s life for his, or some other bargain. He was expecting them to roll up to Dark’s current resting place (some tall, dark mansion about three towns over) and he was expecting to be hauled out of the car, tied up with Marvin’s magic, Chase’s gun leaving a dent in the back of his head.

He was expecting this.

He wasn’t expecting Dark to have kept Jackie alive, though, and seeing him is a shock. 

Jackie looks like a shell. He looks entirely empty, devoid of a soul. There’s blood trickling lethargically from a scrape on his forehead, and his eyes are vacant and unfocused. Dark really did a number on him, and Anti feels a surge of pride.

“Dark,” Marvin begins.

Dark turns. He’s as handsome as he ever is, greying skin, red and blue eyes, dark hair. “Marvin and his merry men,” he says, voice as smooth and sweet as cyanide. “And Anti. How I’ve missed you.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Anti says.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dark tells him. “I presume you’ve come to collect your friend here.”

“There’s no other reason we would come here,” Marvin says. 

“And what are you going to give me in return?” Dark asks, twisting his fingers together. “I do hope you were expecting him for nothing. That’s a terrible way to conduct business, don’t you think?”

“We’ll give you Anti,” Marvin says and Anti allows himself a chuckle.

Dark’s interest is piqued. “Anti in exchange for this shell of a man. Things don’t get much better than that, do they?”

“We thought you’d like it, you sadistic son of a bi-” Chase says before Henrik shuts him up with a sharp jab of his elbow.

Dark just laughs. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today. Here. Collect your man. Leave Anti here for me. And then never return, hm? You’ve made your choices. You have five minutes to leave my property.”

They don’t bother saying anything else. Henrik and JJ rush to Jackie’s side, Chase trains his gun on Anti, as if he’s expecting him to do anything. He’s a psychopath, not an idiot, but Chase wouldn’t know the difference.

Marvin just watches. He says, “Thank you, Dark,” and then he leaves, followed by Chase, JJ, Henrik, and Jackie’s shell.

Dark smiles at him. “Now, where to begin?” he says, and his words seep into Anti. “We have all the time in the world, don’t we?”

* * *

 

“Jesus,” Chase swears, “Jesus fucking Christ, Jesus fucking Christ. I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe him.”

“None of us can, Chase,” Marvin says, somewhat soothingly.

Henrik makes a concerned noise from the backseat. “Chase, your worries are not unexpected, but they are unnecessary. None of us had any idea of how horrid Anti would be. Don’t let it stress you.”

“Easier said than done,” Chase says and he cocks the gun.

“Don’t shoot that in the car, Chase,” Marvin says, “you might have a death wish but the rest of us don’t.”

Chase grunts in frustration and settles for punching the dashboard. “I can’t believe we didn’t realise.”

“None of us can,” Henrik says. “Now silence. My patient needs help, and I cannot supply that if we have someone shooting guns around.”

“Sorry,” Chase mutters. JJ reaches over to pat his shoulder and Chase leans into it, feeling like the world is falling apart.

* * *

 

“I can’t believe we trusted him,” Chase says, once they’re home and Jackie is asleep in his old room. 

“Let bygones be bygones,” Henrik says. “We have him home now, and Anti is not here to torment us. We can heal.”

“We all trusted him, Chase. You can’t fault yourself for not noticing something none of us noticed,” Marvin says.

Chase just sighs, tapping his fingers on the tabletop. “I just… how are we going to make it up to Jackie? We  _ forgot  _ about him.”

_ Anti was manipulating us,  _ JJ signs, frowning at Chase.

“That’s not an excuse!” Chase bursts out. “I should have done more. Jesus, I should have known, or something. Anti was always really fucking sketchy about Jackie, I should have known.”

“Chase,” Marvin says.

“Don’t ‘Chase’ me,” he says, trying really hard not to start crying.

“Chase,” Marvin says again, softer this time. “We’re all sorry for this, for what we did to Jackie. And we’ll all regret trusting Anti for the rest of our lives. But we have him back now. We can protect him, and heal him.”

Chase sobs. “He’ll never heal from this. You saw what he was like with Dark.”

“He will heal,” Henrik says, “you doubt my abilities as a doctor. He may not fit the same puzzle piece as before, but he will heal. You trust me.”

“I just wish this had never of happened,” Chase says. “I wish we were there. I wish we had protected him more.”

_ He would never have let us,  _ JJ signs.  _ We did all we could. _

“Why are you all so calm about this?” Chase asks.

“I’m wreaking a war inside my head,” Marvin says. “Jackie’ll heal. And I’m sure he’ll forgive us - or at least, try to. We have him home and safe now, and Dark or Anti won’t touch him again.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope u enjoyed! 
> 
> i didnt mean to make marvin the unanimous leader of their group, it just... happened. my personal headcanon is marv is the most powerful of the lot and i guess that translated across. i also didnt mean to make marvin seem sort of,, bad? but he would make a rocking villain lol.
> 
> heres to many more posts on this site! yay <3


End file.
